


Chiaroscuro

by foxdreams



Category: Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: And keyblades, Blood mention(s), Canon-typical past abuse mentions, Character Study, Dating by way of fists?, F/M, Insomnia, Kairi can have a little blood as a treat, M/M, Post-KH3 and Post a bunch of my assumptions about how MoM plays out, Sora and Riku make a cameo, Sparring, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, When you're both healing in a really messy way and then you kinda collide, and maybe a kiss, that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25718107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxdreams/pseuds/foxdreams
Summary: “Breaking it won’t fix what’s broken,” Vanitas says. “But if you want to destroy yourself so bad, well. I’m right here.”Those people—those morning people—they’re different than the two of them, rough-edged and blurry in the moonlight, Vanitas' eyes glinting like something inhuman, Kairi dripping blood from her hands.Kindness is for daylight people.“Fine,” she hedges, arms crossed. “What do you have in mind?”---(Kairi, Vanitas, and the messy, no good, very bad process of figuring out who you are after the story ends and you don't)
Relationships: Implied Sora/Riku - Relationship, Kairi/Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts), Sora & Riku & Kairi
Comments: 19
Kudos: 72





	Chiaroscuro

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently I wasn't done writing a thesis on what I wish Kairi was like in canon so naturally I blacked out for several hours in the middle of the night and woke up with this.
> 
> I just think Kairi should get to be a little bit feral, you know, considering everything she's been through. (Vanitas too.)
> 
> This fic is post-MoM insofar as the tiny bit of info we have dissected from the trailer as of this moment in time, and post-getting Sora back.

There are times when Radiant Garden rises up in her memories to choke her, when the present bleeds into the past so seamlessly she gets lost in waking dreams. Side effects of her year asleep, Ienzo had said, when she’d finally gotten up the courage to ask. But Radiant Garden isn’t home to keyblade wielders, after the war, and though they stay for a while, it’s transient. One at a time, they all leave, even Sora and Riku, who wait as long as they can before missions call them away.

Everyone moves on at the earliest opportunity, except her.

There’s more for her to know, here, and she can’t leave until she learns it. So she shadows Ienzo in his lab, makes herself useful for whoever needs her, and hopes something will crystallize into a direction if she just waits long enough.

Sleep doesn’t visit her easily, anymore, and when it does, nightmares stalk its footsteps. She’s had enough of that for a lifetime and then some, wandering endless mazes of memory and dreams and all of that put together, but the insomnia still hits her _hard_. She can’t shake the feeling she’s wasting time, that she woke up a year older and no memory of living it, when she’s wasted so many years already.

No. She doesn’t like to sleep.

The room they give her is large and fine with tall windows and fine linens and all of the life sucked out, and on nights like these it just feels like another cage.

Instead, she wanders.

There’s so much of the world she wants to see, so many secrets she can feel pulsing just behind the walls, and Radiant Garden rewards those who want to unravel its secrets. 

That’s how she finds the training grounds. There’s an old path outside, winding around into the meadow beyond the spires of the castle where the ground is overgrown with weeds and the trappings of disuse. Further exploration reveals a derelict shed so thick with old vines she has to use her keyblade in one hand and a light spell in the other to see by and slice them away. 

Inside, the air is thick with musk and the scent of loam, but what she finds is a treasure.

A whole battalion of what were probably training dummies, in straw and rotting leather. Old, rusted training shields and some wooden swords hang from uneven nails on the walls. 

In the corner a tall, weighted pillar that feels hard and like it could take a hit. She’s dragging it out into the open before she can’t think about it, settling it in the middle of what probably used to be a dirt ring for sparring. A few Aeros help clear the space, and by the time she’s done she’s sweating through her dress and covered in nicks, but it looks like a training ground again, the dummies set up in rows. She could tell the others about it—but a small, selfish part of her stops and asks if she doesn’t one one small little place for herself that doesn’t remind her of her cage at the castle. 

Not when it’s taken so much from her, not when she wants to claim something back.

Her neck prickles. She whirls in a wide circle, and there—there’s a tower rising in the distance, probably some old abandoned restoration project, and there’s a dark shape in the window. 

It’s a familiar presence, but she can’t place it. Then she flinches back when it lands in a crouch. Her keyblade is in her hands immediately, braced to kill—

“Don’t stop on my account,” a voice calls, like Sora but rougher, with all the gentleness trimmed away.

“Vanitas,” she says. She knows he’s been at the castle for a few weeks, submitting to tests for reasons all his own, but that doesn’t explain why he’s here now, in the middle of the night. “I thought you were at the castle.”

“What?” he says, rolling his shoulders out. “Surprised they let me out of the cage every so often?” He fixes her with a half-cocked smirk. “Ah. But you’d know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t you?”

She wants to deck him. Her hands are shaking, and she isn’t sure yet if he’s a threat in words or actions.

“What do _you_ want?” she grits out.

“That’s a loaded question,” Vanitas says, drawling. “I don’t know if I feel like telling you something that personal.”

“Okay, then let’s try ‘what do you want?’”

“Touchy, touchy,” he says. “Can’t a guy take a walk in the middle of the night without being accosted? ‘Sides, this is my spot. You’re trespassing.” He jerks a thumb at the tower behind them. “Has been for weeks.”

“That old thing?” Kairi asks, squinting. “Looks like it’ll come falling down any minute.”

“All part of the fun,” he says, lips curling over his teeth like he isn’t used to smiling. “Besides. Only place to get some peace and quiet around here.”

She hates that she knows exactly what he means. All of the people here get _twitchy_ when they don’t know exactly where Kairi is at all times—Sora and Riku for one, but even the people at the castle, terrified their lost Princess will go missing a second time. She doubts Vanitas is allowed free reign of the world, considering his track record, reformed on paper as he is or not. A cage is still a cage, whatever the size.

That’s probably why he’s come to threaten her, test whether she _cares_.

“Okay. I’ll make you a deal. I won’t tell anyone you’re out here, and you don’t tell anyone _I’m_ out here, and then you don’t watch me like a creep.” She stabs her index finger at him at the last part.

“Already making demands!” he laughs. “I like you, Princess.”

“This is a negotiation,” she says primly. “You’d know if it was a demand.”

“I’ll bite. Hit me with a demand.”

“Okay, how about ‘leave me the hell alone or I’ll blast you into next week’?” she says, voice saccharine.

He nearly doubles over laughing. “That’s Radiant Garden’s royal family for you, huh? All bark and no bite.”

“I’ll show you bite,” she snarls, but he’s already gone, his laughter echoing all the way back to the shadows of his tower. It’s hilariously poetic, when she thinks about it. How _dramatic_. How utterly Vanitas.

She blows her bangs out of her face in irritation. He’s entirely derailed her plans. She’ll have to try again next time.

—————

A week later, she lies awake again, and the familiar churning returns to her heart. She’s restless and the energy feels like it’s about to explode out of her if she doesn’t _do_ something _._

There are times where her body doesn’t feel like her own, brittle and sickly after an entire year without much movement. She longs for the ache and the burn of sore muscles, something to ground her, but Radiant Garden is a city for scholars, not for island girls who grew up barefoot and sword fighting her two best friends until one of them was too battered to move. Not for keyblade wielders like her. 

She’s out of the castle and halfway to the training grounds before she even realizes, her heart pumping loud in her ears. This feels risky, _dangerous_ , and she wants it so badly she can’t stand it.

There’s black rage behind her breast so thick and choking that if she didn’t _know_ she was all light would worry her. She drags out one of the heavy dummies and stabs it into the dirt so deep it won’t move, and then she stands, staring. Then she hits it, hesitant, less of a punch and more of a tap to get a feeling. It feels good, the coil and release of her shoulder and how her body twists with the momentum, and she tries again, relishing in the rhythm of her body.

She rains her fists down on it, imagining she’s hurting someone else, landing punches to their heart and lungs and all the soft places she’s been told are lethal with enough force, hitting until each one slams up her arms and into her neck, until her knuckles split open with the force, stopping only to throw rapidfire _Curagas_ to stitch them back together.

She doesn’t know how long she goes, just that she loses herself so completely in the action she never wants to stop, only does because the persistent ache in her hands starts to resist her abuse of her magic, and the dummy looks pummeled. She’ll have to start on a fresh one tomorrow.

Only then does she remember Vanitas, and his lonely tower. She doesn’t feel his eyes tonight. 

Weird, how she almost wishes for the company.

—————

Sora and Riku come to visit. It doesn’t happen often, between her training at the castle and their missions it’s rare their schedules all match up, rarer still they’d spend the time in Radiant Garden, with such bad memories for all of them.

They go to breakfast in the main room of the castle, long tables and high ceilings with too much room for too few people, Kairi planning on picking at eggs she doesn’t really want for the fifth day in a row and mostly watching Riku watch Sora consume an entire stack of pancakes with a _very_ lovestruck look on his face. Entertainment is hard to come by here, and she can enjoy it while it lasts.

There’s a package sitting on her usual seat. It’s crudely wrapped, as if by someone who’s never had occasion to make a gift before, all crumpled paper and tape careless around the outside instead of tucked into the corners like she’d been taught. _Perfection in all things, Kairi,_ she remembers, and pulls the present closer.

“What’s that?” Sora asks, already leaning over. His spoon is halfway out of his mouth, and Riku is already fisting a hand in his shirt to drag him back.

“Eat, Sora,” he sighs. “Kairi’ll show you when she opens it.” Sora sighs, but places the spoon in safer territory. 

“But—wait. We didn’t forget your birthday, did we?” Sora asks, brows pinched with concern. 

“No,” she laughs, waving a hand. “Not for another few months.”

“Phew,” Sora sighs, collapsing into his seat. “You scared me for a minute there.”

“Secret admirer?” Riku jokes, and Sora, ever the oblivious romantic, leaps forward so fast the bowl almost goes flying. Riku catches it at the last second.

“Really?! You think?!” Sora asks excitedly.

“That’s kind of old fashioned,” she laughs, looking it over. But Riku’s always been even more of a romantic than Sora. She knows, she’s spent years watching him agonize over Valentine’s cards. “Next you’ll ask me if someone is courting me.”

“No courting until you’re thirty, young lady,” Sora says in his best imitation of Yen Sid, stroking an imaginary beard. Riku shakes with silent laughter until Sora’s pounding him on the back until he wheezes “ _Yen Sid_ ? _Really_?”

She’s _missed_ them, in the careful cultivation of her life here. Their presence makes the shadows less dire.

She unwraps it carefully, vivid purple against the fading bruises on her knuckles. It’s been hard to hide them, so she’s been wearing things with long sleeves for the time being—Sora is easy enough, but if she isn’t careful, Riku will find her out, and she doesn’t want to get a lecture about it. 

Her fingers still as they brush rough… fabric, wound into tight spools, with a metal catch at one end of each.

Riku’s brow furrows. “Bandages?” he questions. “Weird choice for a gift.”

“Bandages?” Sora repeats, deflating. He was probably hoping for something juicier. “Kairi, are you hurt?”

“No,” she denies, tucking her hands further into her sleeves. “I’m fine. I don’t know why—”

A note falls into her lap, parchment folded into a tiny triangle that she carefully unfurls.

 _Wrap it at least twice per hand if you don’t want bone splinters_ , says the simple note. _Don’t forget your thumbs_. 

Instantly, her eyes snap across the table to Vanitas, sitting alone at the end closest to the windows. He’s turned away, looking bored as can be, his head perched on his hand, which is how she knows she’s right. He’s never _bored_ . It’s only a front he’s learned to affect while he categorizes everyone in a room, and she _knows_ because she does the same thing, war training from her father’s events. Politics is just another kind of war, just fought with words and frilly dresses.

It sends a thrilling shiver down her spine, like she’s in on a secret.

She snaps the note shut before Sora can read it, stowing it in her shirt. “Extras from Ienzo,” she says, deflecting. “He asked if I could to test them. Magic-repellent material, they’re working on developing it for the wielders.” 

It’s not a lie--she’s been helping on the project, on and off--it’s just not the entire truth.

“Ask him for more,” Riku says. “We can use them on missions.” He tugs Sora closer with a casual arm around his waist that Sora leans into. “Especially with how often _this one_ gets hit.”

“Hey!” Sora twists, and Riku avoids his hands, laughing. “You should come with us sometime, Kairi! Keep your skills sharp.” Sora grabs his own bicep and flexes, grinning widely, and yeah, she missed them too.

“Maybe sometime,” she says, smiling at them. It's not the right time to tell them she's never planning to take her Mark, that she'd realized that was someone else's dream, like so much of her destiny. She'll tell them, one day.

She feels Vanitas looking at her like a constant presence just out of sight. 

She lets him.

—————

She tries the wraps that night, methodically wrapping one hand, then the other, careful to loop around her thumb, flexing her fists. They feel supportive, her joints locked right into alignment. 

She looks at herself in the mirror, red dimmed eyes and pale skin and her riotously pink sleepwear clashing with both her fists, and likes it. 

It’s hard to figure out what to make of Vanitas—what he wants with her, what he thinks. 

But she looks at the wraps, and she’s curious.

—————

She comes back, two nights later, with a fresh dummy and fresh rage in her heart. They’d found something in the labs, some record of what was— _done_ to her, some signal of how her very heart isn’t her own, and the only thing keeping her from screaming more than she is is _this_ . One of her hits is laced with magic and hits the dummy so hard she gets thrown backwards— _magic-repellant_ , of course, it makes sense when she thinks about it—and she’s pretty sure her lip splits. Her legs shake when she gets up.

This feels like control, even though her hands are screaming already. She readies herself to go again.

Someone yells something but she misses it. She pauses, then starts up again, reveling in how the padding helps her throw her wrist behind the punch, and they call again.

“ _What?!_ ” She snaps, whisper-yelling. She doesn’t have the patience for this, for any of this; she thinks maybe it snapped around the time Xehanort put his hand on her shoulder and his blade in her chest.

“I _said_ you’ll break your hand like that,” Vanitas repeats, calling down to her. He’s halfway out his tower window, one leg draped casually over the facade, radiating calm, and it makes Kairi mad enough to spit.

She’s deep in a spat of backbreaking insomnia so vivid and visceral it clings to her and makes everything hurt. Even _looking_ at him hurts, both her eyes and her light filled heart.

She spits blood onto the grass. Maybe she _wants_ to hurt. So she turns her back to him and starts again, one-two, one-two, punches that land so hard on the dummy she feels it up her shoulder and down her spine. She’ll show him _hurt_.

“Princess,” he says, eyes flashing. His hand catches hers, massive and unyielding, and she doesn’t know how he’s landed without a sound, and panic _must_ flash across her face because he’s dropping her before she can think. “I’m serious.”

“Maybe I want to break it,” she says, snarling. She’s been relearning herself all these months, all the time, and finding she _likes_ the hot rush of anger.

“Breaking it won’t fix what’s broken,” Vanitas says. “But if you want to destroy yourself so bad, well. I’m right here.”

She eyes him, _scans_ him up and down like she can figure out what he’s after. They both know he’s been leaving her the wraps, a fresh pair every few days that appear at breakfast or outside her door, but she can’t bring it up and he won’t either. Those people—those _morning_ people—they’re different than the two of them, rough-edged and blurry in the moonlight, Vanitas’ eyes glinting like something inhuman, Kairi dripping blood from her hands.

Kindness is for _daylight_ people.

“Fine,” she hedges, arms crossed. “What do you have in mind?”

He grins at her like he’s the one that’s won something, all fang. With a flourish, he summons a haze of darkness so intense it’s like he’s daring her to say something, like he’s testing her mettle. She refuses to flinch, even as the space between the curling smoke writhes and seethes and _is full of yellow eyes and a tornado that swallows her whole_ _and doesn’t even leave her bones behind_ —a princess of light to the very end.

She grits her teeth and wills it away.

It clings to his arms and hands and coalesces there, writhing and curling over him gently, like it missed him. The tendrils weave together over-under until they form a solid mass, a portable shield the length of his arms, one on each, solid and real.

“Well?” he says, dragging one foot back into a braced position. “Show me.”

There’s a second where she breathes—the world _hinges_ on that inhale, because this moment is important and she wants to _remember—_ remember how in the moment between her _swing_ and _connection_ Vanitas is _everyone,_ Ansem and Xehanort and Saïx and every person who had ever put their hands on her, his amber eyes pinpricks of light in her tunneling vision.

She pummels him. Her form is messy and her fists are loose but she does it anyway, and he’s _right,_ the living darkness has—spring, _buoyancy_ , so the worst she gets is a little sting to her wrist but nothing more, nothing like the creaking of bone and tendon she’s used to from hitting the dummies. He holds firm, even as she throws him back a few feet, bracing _hard_ against her onslaught. Even that is satisfying, because she’s giving him everything and he’s taking it without sending it back, eating all the pain she’s throwing at him whole.

They go for what feels like hours, until she knows she’s spilling tears along with her shouts and appreciates more than anything that Vanitas stands silent as a sentinel and lets her.

When it’s over, she slides to her knees on the damp grass, shivering. Part of her is empty, and part is so full she doesn’t know what to do with it. 

Vanitas shakes out his arms, stretches widely with a series of loud pops, and sends her a crooked grin, whistling.

“Not bad for a princess.”

She laughs, despite herself. “I’m more than a princess.”

“So? How’d it feel?” he asks, opening his arms to the sky. The moon catches his silhouette and reminds her of someone else. “A taste of darkness.”

She rises on shaky legs, knowing she’ll be sore and bruised tomorrow.

“Be here tomorrow,” she says. “And this time, I want you to fight back.”

She brushes past him on the way out, touching her shoulder to his, testing if he’s _human_ under all the shadow. He blinks at her, long and slow. 

His mouth twists like he’s mocking her. “It’s a _promise_ ,” he says, the borrowed words twisted on his tongue.

—————

He keeps his promise. It’s refreshing to have someone that does.

—————

Sora and Riku would hate she was doing this, wouldn’t understand why. Riku just turns inward, spirals so far down he’s unreadable and throws himself into work to make it up, and Sora presses on and pushes down until he breaks. 

But she _wants_ to dwell in this, drown in it until it loses power over her, and Vanitas seems to want to _let_ her. 

Sometimes she doesn’t want to talk. That’s the best part about Vanitas, she comes to realize. He doesn’t say anything that’s not worth saying, so silence with him is silence with purpose. Not the kind she’s been taught to hone her whole life, something meek and ordinary. His silence commands respect.

She wants to learn to do that, to be _that_. Walk into a room and catch six sets of wary eyes sizing her up like she’s a threat.

So she starts to watch him back, stealing glances like a thief at breakfast and during lunch breaks at the castle and passing him trailing Ansem the Wise in the labs.

The best part is that he _lets_ her look, isn’t uncomfortable with her long, probing stares. He lets her look longer than anyone ever has— _decorum, Kairi, a few seconds at the most, then a look away_ . He’s proud, and there’s an air of that in this: yes, look, for I _deserve_ to be looked at. 

But Vanitas _lets_ her look. So she lets him look back.

His presence is danger; she feels the dark seethe under his skin whenever he’s near and it borders on discomfort, the absolute high-octane collision of her powers with his, but even that part is satisfying, pain with _purpose_ . Vanitas is proud and full of himself and vain and _difficult_ and this is a _very bad idea_ but Kairi is pretty tired of having good ones.

Vanitas cuts his eyes to her. She flashes her teeth in a smile.

Maybe she’ll see what a bad one is like. 

—————

They introduce keyblades. She’s afraid of it, because the way the blade formed from her heart sings against the teeth of his feels intimate in a way just fists didn’t, a marker of something shifting, changing between them.

They come at each other, night after night, as soon as her body will allow, bruises blossoming all up her ribs and down one leg where she always falls to her right hand side—with a desperation they both share. She feels it in every clap of his blade against hers.

What Ven hasn’t told her, she’s put together from the reports and delicate questions to other guardians, how he’d tried to merge with Ventus and nearly destroyed them both, only to be dragged back from the abyss by the other Guardians, once Sora was back, and then set adrift. 

Vanitas knows what it’s like to long for a connection he’ll never have. 

She’s spent so long living for others that when she finally let go of _Sora_ , finally realized her path wasn’t on the tiny islands, she was lost. She’s still losing.

Maybe Vanitas is too; maybe that’s why they understand each other. 

Why they fight so hard to exist.

—————

More and more often, as summer gives way to fall, they linger after practice, passing a water bottle between them, figuring they’ve probably had each other’s blood in their mouths now, so what’s a little water between friends.

He won’t tell her about the experiments at the castle. The _project_ , he calls it. But he tells her other things, if she’s persistent. So she asks him about what he does for fun, what he thinks of the worlds, and he clams up. So she tries again. Asks him about what he thinks of the makeup of hearts, and the balance of light and dark, and it’s like she’s unlocked something. She draws her knees up and forgets to fight for the rest of the night, rapt, as Vanitas tells her his theories on all the things she longs to understand. He stops himself whenever she looks lost, scoffs, and says it’s not that interesting until she presses on. So she explains again, simpler, and she never breaks eye contact, breathless with worry that if he stops she’ll lose his rare look at what’s underneath.

She tells him about the islands, and then—because she figures they’re in this together now, anyway, and he’s been in Sora’s heart so it’s not like it’s news—she tells him the rest. Even tells him about the new memories, the ones she’s still figuring out how to deal with, how Xehanort had a stranglehold over her life for so long it’s thrown everything after into doubt.

He leans against her shoulder the slightest bit, warm and real. 

“Don’t give the old man more power than he already had,” he says, when she’s finally done talking. She starts to cry, after that, and Vanitas presses the side of his hand into hers, and somehow that feels more gratifying than anything he could’ve done, because he _knows._

He picks up talking again when she drops off, and she’s grateful for that, too.

Finally, he runs himself dry by the time dawn rolls around, shaking his head. “I prattled on like that geezer all night,” he complains, automatically extending a hand down to her to help her up. She takes it. “That was valuable training time you let me waste.”

“I don’t know,” she hums. “Training doesn’t always have to be keyblades and fists, does it?”

“Guess not,” he allows. 

She wonders if he’s embarrassed, so she makes sure he knows. “Really. I’m sure we didn’t cover everything. You’ll have to tell me more sometime.”

That time he walks her back to her room. She won’t tell him, but it’s nice to have someone to brave the cold confines of the castle with, helps her feel less alone with her thoughts. When they get to her door there’s an awkward moment of expectation, and she can’t shake the feeling she’s being walked to her porch on the islands, her father peeking down disapprovingly from the window whenever Sora and Riku insisted on walking her home. What would he think now, she wonders, with a thrill. All the things he would disapprove of in one package, standing outside her door, somehow more human under the castle lights.

“Goodnight, Vanitas,” she says, and in a wild moment of decision presses a kiss to his cheek. “See you at breakfast.”

She can hear him sputtering behind her, and it’s worth every second of risk.

—————

They keep it secret, and that’s good, too. She’s never had a secret this big or this sharp before, and it’s nice to have something entirely her own. Not Sora’s. Not Riku’s. As much as she loves them, she’s never grown up in their eyes. Vanitas looks at her and makes her feel capable. Respected. Even when he’s goading her, telling her her guard is shit and sending her back slamming into the dirt, it feels like potential.

He must have his own reasons for meeting her, his own demons. She wants to know what they are.

—————

Right on the edge of winter, Vanitas comes to training a live wire, uncontrolled and snapping, and he’s a tornado of blades and fists that sends her on he defensive. She’s shielding more than fighting, absorbing the blows he keeps delivering and it reminds her of that first night, when she was wild and he was staunch and heavy and took all her pain. There’s pain in him, she feels it in her chest as if it’s her own, as she feels a lot of his emotions these days.

He comes at her like he’s looking to die, mirroring that same desperation she had, so she fights back, using every trick he’s taught her to keep up. She keeps inside his guard, darting in and stabbing before he can swing around, and that’s how she slashed him.

She looses a blow so sharp it lands heavily across his chest and blooms red all over his jacket. But she’s always been good in a crisis, so she’s pressing her hands insistently to the wound and muttering _Curaga_ before he can even get his head around it. 

“I don’t need your help,” he snaps, batting her away, one hand tracing where the wound was. “Just leave me _alone_ already!”

“Too bad,” she says. “You’re gonna get it anyway.”

“You guardians and your pity, you all—”

“No, Vanitas,” she says. “Nobody else is dying because of me. Including you. I’ll drag you back screaming if I have to.” She flips her hair over one shoulder. “I’ve done it before.”

“That act won’t work on me, Princess. There’s nothing here to save,” he says, tapping on his chest, laughing until it swells into something like mania. “That’s what they told me at that precious castle of yours! Months of looking and they couldn’t even find a heart! Isn’t that _funny_? Not even a half,” he says. “Guess he took that, too.” His keyblade hits the dirt and disappears, and a few unversed form at his feet, sluggish masses that don’t take the shape of anything in particular. She drops her keyblade too, stepping closer.

“Then I’ll help you make something to save,” she says. 

“Aren’t you _scared?_ ” he asks, looming over her like there isn’t just a few inches between them. His hand snakes around to grip her chin in surprisingly gentle fingers, and she doesn’t flinch. “I could snuff it out, all of that light.”

“But you won’t,” she challenges, pressing herself closer so he leans back, their faces inches apart. “Because that’s not what you _want_. Is it, Vanitas?” He falters, face so open for a second it reminds her a little of Sora. “Or else you wouldn’t keep coming back.”

“You don’t want me to leave you alone,” she says, quiet. “Because I don’t want you to leave.”

The hand on her chin is shaking. “I…” he starts, but cuts himself off. She leans up, slides her hands to the solid rise of his shoulders, then braces her cold fingers against his neck, waiting for him to stop her, but he only looks, inviting her to look back. The pulse under her fingers is rapid fire. His eyes are flecked with orange up close, and framed with long lashes, and she knows why people fall to darkness, if it’s always so beautiful up close. She shuts her eyes and kisses him, the softest, chaste brush of lips, and before she can pull away entirely he pulls her closer by the waist and presses into it and she has never _felt_ so powerful. 

It’s so different than the first kiss she thought she’d have, some picturesque sunset over the water on the Destiny Islands with soft music swelling in the background like it was a dream. She’s covered in blood both her own and his, and his hands burn where they brace her waist, his fingers holding her like she’s going to disappear. There is no swelling symphony, no victorious trumpets or mourning violins to mark the occasion—just the harsh sound of their breathing. Nothing but the sharp tang of ozone invading her senses as she draws him closer by the jacket.

It’s messy and cold-chapped, simple human lips on teeth on lips, and Kairi has never felt more purely _wanted_ , never had a space so clearly for her and no one else.

For once, there is no question: she can tell from the way he kisses her back like there’s a firestorm in his heart, like he’s drowning for it—she won’t regret this. 

She can tell by the way her heart sings, how he mirrors her so perfectly.

She will never regret Vanitas.

She pulls back, searching his face.

“Not bad for a princess,” he breathes, and she twines her arms around his neck and laughs against his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Chiaroscuro, in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.
> 
> Shout at me on twitter @dispositiongay


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